Days of 1896: Athens and the Invention of the Modern Olympic GamesBy Michael Llewellyn Smith

$32.00

Days of 1896: Athens and the Invention of the Modern Olympic Games is a significant contribution to the modern history of Greece. Michael Llewellyn Smith weaves together three strands in the revival of the Olympic games: the nineteenth-century explosion of sport in Great Britain and the West that created the conditions for international competition; the social and economic progress of the young Greek state that made Athens a plausible candidate to host the Games; and the genius of the idealist Baron Pierre de Coubertin in yoking together amateur sport and internationalism in a new institution with rich symbolic power. Days of 1896 is the rich and engrossing account of one of the most potent symbols of modern times.

Praise for the British edition of Days
of 1986

“Michael Llewellyn Smith’s sharp and elegant history of
the first international modern Olympics…captures brilliantly the
atmosphere of Athens in the late nineteenth century.”
— Mary Beard, Times Literary Supplement

About the Author
Michael Llewellyn Smith has been British ambassador in Warsaw and Athens, and is the author of The Great Island: A Study of Crete, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919-1922, and Athens: A Literary and Cultural History.